[GLLUG] Repetitive Kernel Compiles

[Edward Glowacki]

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 14:48, Brian Hoort wrote:
> Anyhow, so I'm left enabling one thing at a time and recompiling and that 
> takes forever on my geriatric PC.  After the first time, I'm removing the 
> offending line in the .config, doing a "# make oldconfig" to answer the 
> question for that line, then:
> # make clean
> # make bzImage
> # make modules
> # make modules_install
> # make install

You should be OK to just skip the "make clean" step.  Usually "make
clean" goes through and deletes anything that isn't the source code,
namely all the bits and pieces you have compiled, all the temp files,
etc. and essentially puts the entire directory tree back into the state
it was at when it was fresh (just after unpacking the source tarball).  

make is smart enough (by design) to only build the absolute minimum it
has to to guarantee your target is up-to-date.  If it has
previously-compiled stuff lying around, it will use as much of it as
possible.  If you do "make clean", you erase everything that has been
compiled before, so "make" has to rebuild the whole thing.  If you don't
do "make clean", your kernel recompile should only take a minute or two,
as it will only have to do a file or two.  

-ED


-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
A PBS mind in an MTV world. 
	-- Author unknown